I'm Missing My Voice When It's Talking to You
by CaffeineChic
Summary: Sleep and waking and reading inbetween


1.  
It is the light that pulls him from the dark – by increments (gently gently gently), so slowly he barely knows he's woken, until he does, his eyes registering the brightness through closed lids. It is a peaceful awakening, but confusing (why is the light by the bed on?). Until it isn't. He always knows that he is not alone in the bed – he wakes, she wakes (always) – but he had given himself over to the night before she had this evening, and while he knew she had come to bed (the mattress dipping, the sheets pulling back, her toes warming themselves on his calves) he had not fully registered her staying awake, the lamp staying lit.

He turns more fully in the light's (her) direction, mapping out the path to consciousness along her hip, fitting himself against her, shifting upwards to kiss the nape of her neck. He feels her body (already mostly relaxed) start to melt into pliancy as she quarter-turns into his body – her nose bumping then brushing the length of his, her legs tangling further, tying their limbs together. The book in her hands closes (a finger trapped in the pages keeping her place).

Her words wash out in an apologetic wave, quietly lapping at his ears "Sorry, did I wake you?"

His arm curls around her waist, his hand sliding beneath her shirt, his thumb tracing along her ribcage (lazy, sleepy patterns and circles) as his mouth kisses the edge of her jaw, then just underneath it. "No, no. It was just the light, don't worry about it. Can't sleep?" he asks through hooded eyes. He is awake, he is not – he thinks sometimes that she, that they, that this is a dream he is having. He likes it when the seams of reverie and reality blur, when he is awake enough to know she is really there in his arms, asleep enough to forget what's in her breast (for even a short time).

"No, my mind won't settle down." She sighs with slight frustration. "I wanted to read for a while, anyway." (and lie with you)

He removes his hand from her shirt (she pouts, he kisses) to encircle her wrist and turn the book cover towards him (though he knows immediately which it is). "You must know this by heart by now." (It fills his own that she loves it as he does)

She smiles and moves to lie on her back. "Some." (a lot) She presses her lips against his, more smile than kiss, speaking against them. "It's my favourite." (a gift from _her_ favourite.) She giggles and he kisses her softly. "Besides, it's not like you can't recite paragraphs of it."

Words and words and words from these pages lining both of their hearts, marking them as the same, binding them. There is love in this act – of knowing, of taking into their hearts prose that they both love, composition that infatuates them both, keeping them safe inside when they cannot do that with each other. This is love.

He cannot dispute her assertion, so he does not try. Instead he lifts her arm until the book is within her line of sight again, opens at the page that her fingers still hold. "Keep reading." His voice is lower than before; he watches her eyes darken, even as a tiny frown mars her forehead in confusion as he repositions himself, face adjacent to her stomach. "Out loud."

He tickles her side gently, eliciting another giggle (he loves that can do this – touch her, make her laugh, kiss the soft skin of her belly).

She clears her throat, adjusting her glasses, murmurs something about narration being his job but raises the book and begins to read from where she had left off, the book obscuring her view of him. The words flow forth from her, calm and quiet as he pushes her shirt up just below her breasts. He trails his mouth across her abdomen, dancing his fingers along her sides, darting his tongue out to circle her navel (her breath hitches, his name suddenly inserted into the text. They both continue). She reaches a paragraph he knows and as the words spill from her lips he echoes them into her skin, each word a kiss, a caress.

His hands grasp the waistband of her shorts, fingertips hooking into her underwear, too, as he drags them both slowly down her legs. (She raises her hips in aid even as her voice rises slightly in surprise. This is new.) He discards the clothes to the floor before moving lower, bending her left knee so that he can move more freely to lie between her legs (a kiss to the inside of her thigh).

"Do you want me to stop reading?" Her voice is playful but quiet as she lowers the book to catch his gaze.

He kisses her thigh again, bites down lightly, laves with his tongue. "No." He feels the shake of her breath through her body as she grins, relaxes beneath his ministrations, lifts the book to continue. Each sentence recited earns her a brush of his mouth against her legs, higher and higher (he lies them on his shoulders).

She turns the page. His mouth reaches her folds.

"Oh." A word, a sound. She arches, her voice less disciplined as she continues reading. Her mouth wraps around the phrasings, the structures, the epistles they both adore as he kisses and tastes and explores (the woman that he adores). Her tongue pushes out the words from the page into the quiet of their quarters, as his pushes into her (a hand on the outside of her leg, holding her steady).

He kisses and licks and nips at her softly, he sucks gently on her clit and the book falls shut, dropping to the bed, her hand finding its way to his hair instead. Her hips rock lightly as he feels the waves of pleasure start to build within her. Fingers join his mouth as he pushes her over the edge, no words falling from her mouth now, just nonsense sounds as her nails scrape his scalp, her body shuddering beneath his.

He kisses the inside of her thigh again, moves to lower her legs as he streches out to lie by her side (placing the book on her stomach, kissing her shoulder).

She turns her head and he kisses her (her taste on his lips, on hers now, too).

He laughs softly, gathers her close. "Think you can sleep now?"

Her hand joins his on the cover of the book, fingers knotting as she giggles and closes her eyes. "Gods, I love this book." (and you and you and you)

2.  
It was the chill in her feet that woke her. A cold that began in her toes but that had moved up through her limbs until an unexpected shiver had resulted in her waking. She stretched and turned towards the empty space beside her, frowning slightly. It was not unusual for her to find herself alone in the bed (she slept more now, exhaustion stealing waking hours from her), but she had been sure she'd heard him come home (what was dream, what was real – she hated when she didn't know definitively). The space beside her cold, the heat from his body that kept the chill from hers absent. In all the nights they had shared a bed she had still to figure out how he got to his side by the wall without waking her. She would fall asleep on the outside (closer to the bathroom) of an empty bed and wake with him on the far side, back close to the wall, his arms around her or chest under her head.

She blinked and sat up, reaching for her robe (a chair placed near the bed, a glass of water on the seat, next to a book, her robe on its back) and slipped her arms through the sleeves. She felt good – tired but not nauseous, chilled but not frozen. She padded in bare feet to the outer room, following the soft glow of the lamp to find him at his desk (his jacket off, his boots discarded – he was picking up her shoeless habits), working his way through a stack of reports. A flick of his eyes told her he had caught sight of her but not fully registered her presence (he never ignored, never failed to notice) as she moved behind the chair. She tried not to startle him as she placed a hand on his shoulder, following the material of his tank top around his neck, down to his front. She leaned forward and kissed the crown of his head. "Hey."

His head fell back against her chest, the weariness (from work, from reports, from the harder edges of their life) weighing down his shoulders. He sagged under her touch, tilting his head back to look at her. "Hey yourself. Did I wake you?"

Her hand slid beneath the cotton of his shirt, pushing underneath – she was at just the right angle to move between the material and skin. She found the top of the scar that bisected his body, a fingertip on either side of the raised tissue, running them down the adjacent skin that still felt sensation as far as she could. Down and back, down and back. She pressed another kiss into his hair as she reached for the report that he had been reading. "No, I was cold; came to find my heater." She caught his eyes and grinned (another kiss, longer, pressed close with a smile). "Is this the latest fuel consumption report?"

Her fingers still trailing his scar, he encircled her arm with his hand, pressing her hand into stillness. "Yeah. Read it in the morning. Go back to bed."

"Come with me."

"You just want me for my body heat."

"And other things. Come on, you need sleep too."

"Put the report down, Laura."

"Ok." The report remained in her hand, her eyes scanned, picking out the relevant details. "Tory was supposed to bring me a copy of this." She knew she had failed to keep the disdain from her tone. _Tory._ She pursed her lips in ire. She became so distracted by her thoughts that she failed to notice as he removed her arm from his shirt, stood and placed his hands on her waist, piloting her steps back towards the bed. The extinguished light caught her attention. "I can't read this in the dark, Bill."

"Good."

"Bill."

"Get into bed and I'll read it to you."

She laughed and rolled her eyes. "You're going to read the fuel consumption report to me? You're such a romantic. However will I ever control myself?" (She said in jest what she meant in earnest – he is the most romantic of men she has ever known.)

She pulled back the covers as he removed his uniform pants, let him slide in first as he took the report from her hands and turned on the lamp. She removed and re-hung her robe, slipping into the space next to him. They arranged themselves so that he reclined slightly, an arm around her back as she settled against his shoulder, feet curled up with his. Her hand burrowed beneath his tank again, this time from the bottom, seeking out the steady beat of his heart, pressing her palm down over it. (She loved the steady thump that thrummed through his body, loved feeling it reverberate through her, loved how alive _he_ felt, how alive that made _her_ feel.)

The voice that narrated words of fiction (and those of love) into her ears rose now to dictate the most mundane of reports. The information was necessary, the data essential. It should be painfully dull. He made it just the opposite. He read to her with as much gravitas and sincerity, as much patience and ardour as he did with every book he had ever offered and gifted her. (_Thump thump thump_, his heart beat beneath her palm, his voice resonated in her head.)

She found his skin with her mouth, punctuated his words with her lips – licked at commas, bit at full stops, kissed as paragraphs ended.

He finished the report and reached overhead to place it on the shelf behind the bed, switching off the lamp.

"You're too good to me." (In jest, in earnest – he is unendingly good to her.)

His hand found her face in the dark, thumb tracing her mouth as fingertips tickled the line of her jaw. She bit down gently on the pad of his thumb, kissed it afterward.

He remained quiet as he tightened his hold, settled them both in for the night – she was unsure what to make of his silence until he broke it.

"Go to sleep. (But please wake up.)"

She promised to do both.


End file.
